Bolivia's indigenous people are rising up and reclaiming a new homeland.
An exciting national revolution is unfolding in Bolivia today, with its indigenous peoples at its core. The movement to refound Bolivia is an inspiration to many around the world. Bolivia Rising aims to bring news and analysis about this revolution to english speakers.

Bolivia’s Mother Earth Law Hard to Implement

Franz Chavez

LA PAZ, May
19 2014 (IPS) - The law for the defence of Mother Earth passed by Bolivia a year
and a half ago has not yet moved from good intentions to concrete action.

The
Framework Law on Mother Earth and Integral Development for Living Well, in
effect since Oct. 15, 2012, outlines principles for making a shift from classic
development models to an integral model “in harmony and balance with nature,
recovering and strengthening local and ancestral knowledge and wisdom.”

The law
enshrines the legal rights of nature, condemns the treatment of Mother Earth’s
environmental functions as merchandise rather than gifts from nature, and
requires efforts to prevent and avoid damage to the environment, biodiversity,
human health and intangible cultural heritage.

Chapter four
of the law establishes an institutional framework on climate change, centred
around an office called the “plurinational authority for Mother Earth”.

The director
of that unit, Benecio Quispe, was appointed on Feb. 18 and is still in the
process of naming a team and setting up an office.

The first
activity organised by Quispe’s office was the First National Workshop on
Climate Change Policies targeting social, academic, public and private
organisations and representatives of the different levels of government:
central, departmental (provincial) and municipal.

The aim of
the two-day workshop that ended Saturday May 17 was to help conceive of climate
change policies with community participation and input.

The
framework law could be used to create controls and monitoring systems in
regions exposed to deforestation and fires in forested areas, lawmaker David
Cortés of the governing Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), who is also a member
of the Global Legislators Organisation (GLOBE International), told IPS.

The biggest
study so far on environmental legislation, published by Globe International and
the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the
London School of Economics, praised the Mother Earth law as a “sweeping
overhaul” of the national management of natural resources, climate and
ecosystems.

But it also
said the legislation failed to set out quantifiable targets that would make is
possible to assess its implementation.

Application
of the law is moving ahead slowly with great difficulty “because the means of
production, neoliberal policies” and business community are characterised by
the careless exploitation of natural resources, lawyer Víctor Quispe (no
relation to the director of the Mother Earth authority), who is also an adviser
to the lower house of Congress, told IPS.

Environmental
awareness has grown since the law was passed, said Cortés, who cited, for
example, efforts by the authorities to generate water saving habits among the
population.

Two million
of Bolivia’s 10.5 million people still lack clean drinking water and just under
four million have no sanitation, Environment Minister José Zamora said last
year.

But while
the framework law requires new legislation to enable its application and
enforcement, other initiatives are seeking solutions to concrete problems, like
water.

This was a
central theme in Cortés’s presentation at the latest meeting of Globe
International, held Feb. 27-28 in the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C.

In Bolivia,
climate change has led to the melting of glaciers, which has reduced supplies
of water to cities in the dry season. At the same time, it has intensified
rainfall and flooding in the months of December and January, Cortés said.

To preserve
water, the government launched the “My Water Programme” in 2011, aimed at
improving supplies for human consumption and irrigation while helping to
guarantee food sovereignty, reduce poverty and boost agricultural productivity.

So far, the
Programme benefits 2,937 projects in 98 percent of the country’s 327
municipalities, with an investment of 118 million dollars, a source with the
Productive and Social Fund, which is carrying out the initiative, told IPS.

These
projects respond to demand for water for consumption and irrigation, in urban
areas by means of systems of distribution to households and in rural areas by
harnessing sources and building mini-dams.

Pollution is
another problem. For instance, the authorities are attempting to clean up the
Rocha river, which runs across the central city of Cochabamba. Some 50
factories dump waste into the river.

When
rainfall is abundant, the tree-lined Rocha river runs clear. But in the dry
season it becomes a source of pollution, with nitrates and sulphates above the
permitted levels, according to the Cochabamba city government’s Mother Earth
protection office.

The director
of the office, Germán Parrilla, told IPS that the authorities were implementing
“an integral basin management plan that starts at the headwaters” of the river
which runs through both rural and urban areas.

The efforts
include the removal of solid waste dumped into the river by local residents and
rubble that locals have used to fill up part of the basin to gain land, as well
as fines for polluters, in line with the 44 recommendations issued by the
comptroller’s office in 2011, Parrilla explained.

In the
meantime, Quispe the lawyer is pushing for parliamentary approval of a bill on
the reforestation of mining areas in the department of Potosí, to improve air
quality in places where waste from tin, zinc and wolfram mines was abandoned.

But the
congressional adviser’s main objective is the clean-up of the Pilcomayo river,
which emerges in Potosí and runs north to south across the municipalities of
Chuquisaca and Tarija before crossing the border into Argentina and Paraguay.

The
Pilcomayo river carries mineral waste dumped by companies mining near its
headwaters, which kills off fish life downstream.

“It is a
question of life or death,” said the lawyer, who hopes the Economic Development
Commission will pass the bill he submitted.

The
initiative would bring together a number of municipalities to carry out an environmental
impact study, adopt prevention measures and clean up the river with financial
support from the governments of Potosí, Chuquisaca and Tarija.